


Obverse (History is Written By the Victors)

by Spazzcat



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Morality, Original Character Death(s), Shiro and Pidge are mentioned but not seen, brief appearance by keith and matt, canon compliant until canon says otherwise, idk what else to tag this as, inspired by that one scene with Voltron looming ominously through the clouds on Naxela, realities of war, some of those characters are children, sort of POV outsider, sort of character study, sort of thinkpiece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-22 07:54:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13162596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spazzcat/pseuds/Spazzcat
Summary: Obversenoun1. the side of a coin or medal bearing the head or principal design.2. the opposite or counterpart of a fact or truth.The first time Sam Holt hears the word Voltron is in the hushed whispers of the guards as he's dragged on board a ship and they nervously scan the sky. A sick feeling settles into his gut as he realizes that there is something out there that even the Galra fear.





	Obverse (History is Written By the Victors)

**Author's Note:**

> (AO3 I really don't appreciate having to write these notes a third time. Stop glitching.)
> 
> TLA isn't dead, I promise, real life's been busy and I've been having trouble writing when I do have time. But I am still working on it. In the meantime, thank you to suggestivesloth for beta'ing this one that I've been working on for a few days.
> 
> There's nothing graphic, but this story does explore some heavy stuff to do with the realities of war. I wanted to take a look at what Voltron looks like when you're on the other side of its lasers, inspired by that scene where the soldiers on the ground turn and run from it looming through the dust cloud on Naxela, because one side's Jaeger is the other side's Kaiju.

The first time Samuel Holt hears the word ‘Voltron’ is in the hushed whispers of the Galra soldiers as he’s dragged aboard the massive ship that docked yesterday at this small mining outpost, dropping off crates of what he knows from experience to be rations and picking up the massive containers of raw ore that Sam and the others have dug from the ground since the last ship came through. He’s not sure what he’s done to be singled out like this, hauled onto the ship by careless hands while his former shiftmates unload crates under the watchful eye of the base guards, but he knows better than to open his mouth to ask. All he can do is try to force his exhausted, aching body to keep up with the pace they’ve set.

 

One of the guards is twitchy as they climb the boarding ramp and keeps scanning the sky in a way that Sam would be tempted to call nervous if they weren’t an eight-foot-tall heavily-armed soldier. “Tell the cargo manager to hurry it up. The sooner we’re off this planet the happier I’ll be.”

 

“The varesht are you so jumpy about?” The other guard demands, impatient both with Sam’s weary stumbling and his partner’s skittishness. He waves one arm in an expansive gesture at the barren expanse of land that surrounds the low cluster of buildings of the base. It’s flat and open for miles, a lifeless ball of dirt and rock with a breathable atmosphere and ore resources as its only redeeming qualities. “There’s nothing out here!”

 

The first guard stops so abruptly that Sam is nearly jerked off his feet between them by the rough grip on his arm, and he muffles a cry of pain between clenched teeth. There is no sympathy to be had here. “You didn’t hear? Voltron was sighted yesterday, just two systems away from here. A whole farming planet was lost.”

 

Sam doesn’t know what Voltron is but it’s impossible to miss the way the second guard’s eyes go wide and dart up to the sky in turn. His whole demeanour shifts, tense and anxious like the first’s now. “They don’t attack twice in the same area so close together.” He mutters, but he doesn’t sound sure of himself. Instead he turns on his heel and begins marching up the ramp again. “You take the slave to the creche. I’ll go talk to the cargo team. We’re sitting ducks on the ground if they do show up.”

 

As he’s dragged through the main doorway into the ship, Sam Holt’s mind is churning too much to even try to catch a last glimpse of open sky before he disappears into space again. Back when he first arrived, when he still had the energy to spare for curiosity instead of simply collapsing to the floor of his cell at the end of his work shift, he’d tried to learn about this new environment he’d found himself in. He knows the Galra empire spans entire galactic clusters in space and stretches back probably several millennia in time. They are warriors, conquerors, a vast military machine.

 

Now a sick feeling settles into his gut as he learns that there is something out there that even the Galra fear.

 

_______

 

“Kotoa!” Versol hisses over his data tablet. “Pick up your socks or Voltron will get you!”

 

Kotoa gives a terrified wail and promptly bursts into tears.

 

Sam moves to intervene, because this isn’t the first time something like this has happened, but as usual Kalni beats him to it. She’s across the room in an instant, grabbing Versol by one ear and cuffing him over the head. “Versol! We do not joke about that!” The younger cub howls, more indignant than hurt, and Kalni cuffs him again for good measure. “You know better.”

 

Moving to scoop up the still-sobbing Kotoa, Sam bounces the little one in his arms, murmuring soft reassurances until the tears turn to hiccups and watery yellow eyes stare up at him anxiously. “You won’ let Voltron get me, right?” Kotoa pleads, sniffling and clinging to the front of Sam’s uniform.

 

“Of course not.” Sam promises, even though he’s still not exactly sure what Voltron is beyond that one overheard conversation the day he arrived and the fact that Versol, brat that he is, likes to use the threat of it to scare the younger cubs to tears like this. The former makes him think it’s a real danger, while the latter gives the impression of some sort of boogeyman. But either way, being a parent is a hard habit to break, even toward the children of aliens who’ve been holding him prisoner for a length of time he tries not to think about. “Voltron will never get you as long as I’m here to protect you.” Then he lifts his voice higher over the chatter in the room as he sets the cub down and tucks him into his bed. “Come on, bedtime all of you!”

 

There’s some grumbling and complaining, but a warning growl from Kalni quickly settles them, much to Sam’s relief. He doesn’t know what he would have done without her taking pity on him and helping out, administering discipline he doesn’t dare give, especially in the first couple of weeks here as he tried to extract some measure of obedience from two dozen unruly alien children who still outrank him as a slave. Being an unwilling nanny to the younger children of the ship’s crew is hard work and a full-time job, but it’s still better than the strain of operating a jackhammering rock hewer or the back-breaking labour of shovelling ore.

 

At the equivalent of maybe twelve, Kalni is the oldest Galra in the creche, and it won’t be much longer until she leaves for good to begin her apprenticeship under one of the crew to learn how to run the ship that her family has worked on for generations as it makes its endless looping run around this sector. As such she rates one of the few private rooms off the side of dormitory. When she heads for it Sam grabs her arm, ducking his head in submission when she bares her teeth at him and making sure to show all the proper deference whose absence he’s pretty sure is what led to the job opening he was brought on board to fill. “Sorry. I just had a question.” He keeps his voice low as the other cubs settle in. “What is Voltron, exactly? I’ve heard the name a couple times, but I don’t know what it is.”

 

Kalni’s expression hardens and for one terrifying moment Sam thinks he’s overstepped his bounds and he’ll be killed on the spot for his disrespect. He’s seen it happen in the mines, and once, in the hallways here to one of the maintenance slaves. But her anger isn’t directed at him. “Monsters.” She spits, voice tight with barely controlled fury. “They’re monsters. They destroy ships and wipe out bases and kill any Galra who happen to get in their way. They don’t take prisoners. They don’t offer chances to surrender. They just...kill.”

 

She jerks free of his grip after that and stalks off into her room. He lets her go, preoccupied with what she just told him. Voltron is no boogeyman, but a very real enemy, and he understands now why the soldiers were nervous that day. Keeping his steps quiet, Sam  crosses to Kotoa’s bedside and crouches down, smoothing a crest of silvery fur back from the sleeping cub’s face. “Don’t worry.” He murmurs, reaffirming his promise. “I won’t let Voltron get you.”

 

_______

 

Amok’s mother comes to collect her one day in tears. The cub’s father, aunt, and two uncles are dead, their ship destroyed by Voltron as they fought to defend a world several galaxies away from here. There will be no memorial for the thousands dead in that battle, just the last two survivors of a broken family comforting each other as best they can.

 

They are gone for three days, and the creche is filled with a tension that none of Sam’s efforts to distract the cubs can lift. It doesn’t help that the scene reminds him harshly of Colleen and Katie, alone now on earth, because he and Matthew may as well be dead for all their ability to go home. When Amok comes back he channels his longing for his family into giving her the biggest hug he can muster and tells her to take as long as she needs.

 

Versol doesn’t make jokes about Voltron getting the little ones anymore.

 

_______

 

“Shouldn’t we be at P-342-Shol by now?” Sam overhears one day in the cafeteria, collecting a cart loaded with lunches for his charges. The speaker wears the uniform markings of an engineer, his dining partner a computer technician.

 

Who shakes his head sadly. “Wiped out by Voltron a month ago. Blew the place to pieces. We’re going straight on to Laatna instead.”

 

“Vrekt.” The engineer curses softly. “How many--”

 

“Almost three hundred. It was a big base.”

 

An impatient growl behind him sends Sam hurrying away with the cart before he can hear anything else. Three hundred soldiers, he thinks. And how many slaves like him, helpless to even defend themselves?

 

He doesn’t mention the conversation to any of the children, faking a smile as he passes out bowls and wipes small faces and makes sure they all do their lessons after lunch. But that night as the darkness surrounds his mat in the corner his mind is plagued with visions of his son and Shiro, burning in their cells as a base collapses around them.

 

______

 

The ship shudders, and little Festalki screams against Sam’s chest. There’s terror on every face as he organizes the kids, herding them into the room that was Kalni’s before she aged out and apprenticed as a fighter pilot in the hangars and that’s belonged to Motrovok since then. It’s not much of a hiding space, but the door will be easier to defend, and they’ll have warning if someone breaks through the main door of the creche. He makes the little kids go by the far wall, the oldest close to him to fight if they absolutely must. But Sam knows without being told that he is supposed to be the first line of defense.

 

He doesn’t mind that as much as he probably should. They’re just kids, after all, Galra or not.

 

Distant gunfire can be heard as he makes sure the outer door is as secure as he can make it, small cots piled up against the metal as a makeshift barricade, and fear churns in his gut. Voltron is in the ship.

 

Two days ago they were diverted from their usual route to pick something up from a planet that had been attacked by Voltron and won. A weapon, judging by the whispers of the crew that Sam’s managed to overhear. Something powerful captured from their deadly enemy that must be delivered to the leaders of the empire at once. Tension is high, everyone simultaneously elated at the honour and terrified, because the weapon is important and surely Voltron will want it back. 

 

And they do.

 

Sam huddles in the small room with the children as the ship lurches under heavy weapons fire and the alarm sirens scream overhead, the lights dimmed to red combat strobes that cast eerie flickering shadows that do nothing to calm his nerves. He remembers all too clearly the fury on Kalni’s face as she talked of ships destroyed, the technician’s sadness as he discussed a base blown to bits and three hundred dead in the rubble, the number of planets and moons he’s seen multiple times now since he came about this vessel and the ones they’ve stopped at once or twice but don’t visit anymore.

 

Finally, finally the shaking stops, the strobes going out and the sirens falling silent one by one. But they stay put. Maybe the attackers have been driven off. Maybe they got what they came for and left. And maybe they’ve taken over the ship and are searching, room by room, to make sure they leave not one Galra or slave alive.

 

They sit in frightened silence for what seems like hours before they hear the crash of the makeshift barricade toppling in the main room. Cubs muffle their cries in wrists and shoulders as Sam lurches to his feet, hefting the unscrewed bed frame leg that is the closest thing to a weapon he could find. He steadies himself against the wall by the door, waiting, fighting down the terror swirling in his gut. These kids are depending on him, and while they may not be his sons and daughters he will protect them all the same.

 

The door slides open and he flinches for just a second before he swings the leg with a hoarse cry, only to have his arm stopped by a massive hand before he can land a single blow. But it’s a Galra hand, in empire armor, and Sam never thought that’s something he’d be so happy to see.

 

The children scramble past him, throwing themselves into the arms of their parents. The soldier who grabbed him releases his arm in favour of scooping Kotoa into his arms, and offers Sam a single nod of gratitude that as a slave is probably about all the recognition he can hope for. He doesn’t mind, though. He can’t begrudge them this reunion.

 

Especially when not all of the parents are here.

 

Four of the oldest cubs are aged out to start their apprenticeships early, and new faces are transferred aboard from elsewhere once the ship is repaired. Voltron’s assault killed fully half the crew and left almost a third of the cubs orphaned, and they’re lucky the whole ship wasn’t destroyed. Sam does what he can to comfort them until their grief starts to heal, but anger burns in his heart and he understands now why Kalni hates them, why the Galra fear them even as they fight them.

 

It’s almost a week after the battle the he learns Kalni was among the dead, shot as she tried to get to one of the fighters. In that moment he decides he will not flinch the next time he believes Voltron has come for his cubs.

 

_______

 

Time marches on, the ship making its endless circuit around the mining and agricultural outposts of this subsector, leaving behind supplies and picking up raw resources to bring back to the main depot. Sam tries not to keep track of the days. It hurts too much, and tells him too much about how long it’s been since Kerberos, since he last saw Shiro and Matt. He focuses his energies on taking care of the children he’s been charged with instead.

 

But each circuit brings fewer stops, more planets lost to Voltron. Their route changes, another subsector added to their domain, their counterpart vessel in the area destroyed. When they make planetfall, sometimes Sam catches glimpses of the local slaves, mismatched weary prisoners like himself. They’re exhausted, battered, worked to the bone as the empire’s demand for resources to maintain itself and fight off their enemy falls ever more heavily on ever fewer shoulders. Once in a while he sees someone collapse over heavy crates and bales and the guards beat them until they either get up or stop moving at all. Sam looks away with a twist of guilt, because there’s nothing he can do about it, and tries not to picture Shiro and Matt sprawled on the ground with their prisoner purple stained with blood.

 

_______

 

The next time they’re at the main depot, he’s escorting some of the older cubs to the marketplace to trade their allowances for trinkets and candy when the combat sirens start to howl and the station shakes under their feet. He grabs their hands, because there’s no time to worry about submission and deference and respect for superior species in a situation like this, and orders them to stay close together as they run. There’s gunfire from the direction of the storage modules, where grain and ore and slaves awaiting transport are kept, and they have to battle against the flow of soldiers heading in that direction as they make their way back to the ship. Sam’s chest aches with the strain of a sprint that he’s too old, too battered to be making but he keeps running anyway, distracting himself from the pain by constantly counting and recounting the heads of the children at his side.

 

They hit the loading ramp of their vessel at a dead run just as it starts to pull away, too vulnerable sitting tied to the station in the middle of a battle, and Sam collapses to the ground one they reach the dubious safety of the cargo bay, lungs heaving and muscles burning too much to go any further despite the terrified urging of the children at his side. As a result they have a front-row view through the atmosphere barrier when something that resembles a giant mechanical red lion tears through the hangar module adjacent to the one they just left and spills fighters and pilots into the vacuum of space. The lion doesn’t even hesitate, smashing the few fighter that managed to launch to shreds of metal and flame with a careless swipe of its paw before ripping open another hangar and the main corridors beyond.

 

This is Sam’s first look at Voltron, watching frozen from the floor as they tear apart a massive space station and the ships visiting it, pure carnage and destruction that is all the more terrifying for the utter silence of it in the vacuum of space and serving no obvious purpose except death. The red lion is joined by blue and green to complete the almost casual destruction of those ships that are trying to stand and fight, while larger yellow and black appear from the far side of the station near the storage areas and throw themselves into the fray. The ships stand no more chance than the station did, cracking like eggs one after another.

 

Amidst the spray of debris spinning outward from the tangled mass of metal that used to be a space station their own ship is fleeing along with a handful of others, pursued by a scattering of smaller white ships that harry them like small dogs, and as Sam sits with a handful of sobbing, screaming Galra children around him amidst a chaos of shouting, sprinting adults, he can’t blame them one bit. Voltron is deadly, dangerous, and merciless, and to go head to head against those monsters would only get them killed.

 

Before the ship changes course and the wall of the hangar blocks the battle from view, the last thing Sam sees is the depot’s main defensive cannon falling silent at last, torn to pieces in the black lion’s jaws.

 

______

 

Kotoa’s father is transferred, and Kotoa goes with him. Sam hugs him goodbye and ruffles his hair. “Be good for the creche slave on the other ship, okay?” He smiles, and Kotoa nods a fervent promise and grins.

 

The ship they transfer to is destroyed just days later as Voltron wrests a conquered planet from Galra control. Sam knows he should be glad that the citizens of that planet are free, but all he can picture is Kotoa’s tiny body floating frozen in space alongside Matt’s and Shiro’s as brightly-coloured lions streak by. He promised to protect him, and he failed.

 

______

 

The attack comes just minutes after they drop out of hyperspace over the same mining outpost Sam left behind when he was first brought aboard, and there’s no time to wonder if this was a planned ambush or if they simply blundered into the middle of an attack on the small base below. All he knows is that they will surely be destroyed, because this time they have nothing aboard that Voltron will want to take. Only Galra that they want to kill.

 

The children are frightened as they help him assemble the barricade, the ship shaking around them, but it helps them feel as though they’re doing something to protect themselves, helps them not think about the fact that they’ll die choking on their own lungs when the attackers tear the ship apart. Sturdy Tollok helps him heave the last cot onto the pile and then they’re moving into the dubious safety of one of the bedrooms, little ones at the back, older cubs at the front, and Sam standing guard by the door, hefting his improvised club as though it will defend them from those monstrous machines he glimpsed at the depot.

 

Minutes crawl past and his heart pounds in his chest. Voltron tore the huge main depot station apart faster than this. Are they being toyed with? The ship is still lurching, the sharp jerk of their weapons firing and the heavier slam of incoming fire, and the combat strobes are flashing, but all too soon he hears a new sound over the wail of breach sirens around them. Shouting, in the corridor beyond the main room, and gunfire.

 

He tightens his grip, the children huddling together as the noise gets closer. Some of the voices are recognizable now. Tollok’s brother, Alkana’s mother, little Festalki’s grandfather that’s all the family she has left. Come to defend their family from this uncharacteristic intrusion. Shouting at the invaders to halt.

 

Rifle fire, and the screech of metal on metal. The shouting stops.

 

The sirens are still blaring but they do nothing to disguise the crash as the barricade is pushed over, toppled cots being shoved out of the way. Somewhere deep in his chest Sam knows that this time it is not the ship’s crew on the other side of that door.

 

When it slides open he’s ready, launching himself with a furious cry that drowns out the intruder’s startled curse. Surprise gives him an advantage despite his age and weakness and he manages three good hits before his wrist is grabbed and he’s pinned to the floor on his stomach, his other arm twisted painfully beneath him. He thrashes anyways, desperate to protect the children behind him from these murderous monsters who have already taken everything from them in the span of the last few minutes. The grip on his wrist tightens until his bones creak and he lets out an involuntary cry of pain.

 

“Keith! Let go! You’re hurting him!”

 

And suddenly the tight grip and the pressure between his shoulder blades are gone and he struggles to his feet, shrugging off a light hand on his arm that almost seems like it was meant to assist him up as he throws himself back into the doorway of the small bedroom where the children watch in terror. “Leave them alone!” He demands, like he has any power in this situation, like he’s had any power at all in however many years he’s been a prisoner of the Galra. “They’re just kids! You’ve already killed their families and destroyed their home, isn’t that enough?!”

 

“Of course we’re not going to hurt them!” The masked figure in orange and navy, so much smaller than a Galra, about the same height as Sam himself, takes a step back in shock as his hands come up in a peacemaking gesture. His partner, in red and white armor, looks equally appalled through the glare of the strobe lights on his visor. “They’re kids, for pete’s sake! And besides,” he reaches up, pulling off the silver mask concealing his face, and Sam’s muscles and mind lock up in shock because he knows this man, knows the wild orange hair peeking out from under the cloak and the pale freckled skin and the wide amber eyes that are starting to brim over with tears and he can’t possibly be here, now, like this, but he _ is _ , “we came here looking for  _ you. _ ”

 

_______

 

Sam bounces Sevit in his arms but the cub continues to wail. He’s used to his mother coming to check on him every night before bed, doting young mother that she was, and he’s too young to understand the reason he hasn’t seen her in weeks, the reason he’s in this strange new place surrounded by strange people who aren’t Galra. All he knows it that he wants her desperately, and all Sam’s efforts at comfort will never be enough to make up for her absence.

 

Still cradling the sobbing toddler against his chest, Sam paces along the window that makes up one wall of the makeshift dormitory aboard the Castle of Lions opposite the row of hastily-fabricated beds. It’s still jarring to wake up and see the stars passing by every night, a blunt reminder of the way everything he thought he knew has been suddenly turned on its head.

 

Matt and Shiro. Both alive. Both  _ free _ . Both searching the stars for him along with fierce little Katie who’s apparently been in space almost as long as her brother has, determined to find her family and bring them home.

 

And they’re Voltron.

 

Voltron. The monsters who’ve haunted his dreams for the past three years alongside the Galra, the killers who blow up entire bases and tear ships and space stations to nothing and kill any Galra who get in their way. The ones who shot Kalni for trying to protect her home and orphaned Sevit and spilled Kotoa into space to die screaming. Who had no faces he could put to them except giant metal lions who destroy, destroy, destroy.

 

Voltron. The defenders of the universe, the heroes of a thousand liberated worlds, the warriors who defend planets and free prisoners and are trying to bring the Empire down. The ones who took down Emperor Zarkon and the trickster Prince, Lotor and are preparing to square off against Zarkon once more. Who wear the faces of his son, his daughter, Shiro, Keith, and other smiling human beings.

 

He doesn’t know how to reconcile the two. He doesn’t know if he can.

 

He should be elated. He’s free. His family is safe. They’ll get to go home. But he isn’t. In the middle of the night, drying the tears of the children he’d refused to abandon, especially when him getting his family back is what cost them theirs, he can’t help but think that what they’re doing isn’t that much better than what the Empire does. They may not be subjugating innocent people, may not be enslaving entire, helpless races, but in just a few short years how many people have they killed? People just doing their jobs and trying to make a living. Kalni said Voltron never offers a chance to surrender. How many Galra would take that offer, in exchange for walking away with their lives and families intact? Not all of them, of course. But more than survive encounters with Voltron now. How many homes destroyed, lives ruined, families torn apart?

 

Sam agrees the Empire needs to be stopped. They’ve caused so much suffering in the universe, taken years from Sam’s own life both in the past and in the future. He’s seen too many die under their hands already for him to argue in favour of leaving the Galra in power. But he can’t help thinking there must be a better way to do it. A way that leaves fewer dead, fewer children orphaned, fewer people uttering the name Voltron in hushed whispers as they watch the sky in fear.

 

History is always written by the victors. At the rate things are going it is Voltron the hero, the defender, the just that will be recounted through the ages when people talk of this war. He truly hopes that will be the case. But unless something changes, all the Galra who survive this war will remember is Voltron the killer, the destroyer, the monster that tore apart their lives.

 

And it’s all Sam will remember too.


End file.
